Peter Wehner, the former George W. Bush senior administration aide and current senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has some hopeful things to say about politics, believe it or not, in his new book, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump. In an interview, he explains why he's hopeful, talking a bit about conservatism, gratitude, and even friendship.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: If politics is dead, does that mean we get to begin again? I confess to being tempted by the sound of that and suspect I'm not alone.
Peter Wehner: As a conservative, you can imagine I'm skeptical that we can or even should begin politics anew. What I would settle for is the renewal of politics. That is fundamentally what my book is attempting to do — to explain why our politics is imperiled, why politics matters, and what we can do to repair it.
When I refer to the death of politics, I have in mind the death-match mindset that characterizes American politics today, the attenuation and attack on democratic virtues, the spread of cynicism and fatalism — and my concern that if these attitudes aren't confronted and reversed, they will do extraordinary, long-term damage to the American republic.
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